Watss: Software for Interpreting Water Temperature Data

Perhaps the single most important environmental influence on fish, water temperature drives survival, behavior, growth, distribution, and other physiological processes.  Recent concerns over changing climatic conditions and its implications for persistence of threatened or endangered fish species has led to a proliferation of water temperature monitoring efforts.  The combination of heightened interest and the availability of inexpensive and durable temperature loggers has precipitated an explosion in the use of these devices that has spread beyond just monitoring water quality.  From detecting timing of fry emergence, to predicting when fish in the wild will spawn, use of these devices is becoming routine.  While remote loggers have been available for several decades, interpreting the data gathered has been hampered by the lack of user-friendly software for implementing common analyses. My hope is that WaTSS fills that void and serves as a developing platform providing quick summaries of standard water quality metrics, including daily, weekly, monthly or rolling averages of mean or maximum daily temperatures, accumulated degree days as well as a suite of other measures calculated across user selected date ranges.  The application is free and can be downloaded from http://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/ResearchAquaticSoftware.aspx along with a manual that describes program function in more detail.